Archive for the ‘Mac OS X’ Category

Being an avid Keynote user with a desire to mesh my carefully constructed Keynote presentations (with audio narration) on YouTube, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out the conundrum of incorporating Keynote presentations into iMovie projects.

I’ve done many Internet searches on the subject over the past couple of years and most answers are patchwork, incomplete, or just plain wrong.

Let’s hope my blog post floats to the top of the (once) painful Google query “import keynote presentations into imovie”. The biggest and most untreated problem is that, though Keynote can generate quicktime files, these files cannot be automatically imported into iMovie. It takes some converting both in Keynote and in the Finder first.

Here is the straightforward procedure for anyone looking:

First, in Keynote:
0. I am assuming you already have a finished presentation that you would like to narrate. Open it.

Narrate
1. Go to File > Record Slideshow
2. Navigate through your slideshow at any speed you want saying anything you would like as narration. Keynote will record everything.

Export
3. Once you are finished, go to File > Export…; This part is a bit tricky.
3 (a). Click the submenu under Formats and go to Custom…
3 (b). In the Video subsection, click Settings…
3 (c). Change the compression type to MPEG-4 Video.
3 (d). Click Okays and Nexts until you get to the dialogue to save your file; save it somewhere
3 (e). Wait for it to compress…
3 (f). Go to the place where you saved the file and rename it to have “.avi” as its extension. If the OS bugs you, tell it to, yes, use the .avi extension.

Import
Now, in iMovie:
4. Go to File > Import Movies…
5. Viola. Your presentation, complete with narration, should import and you can edit the video however you want.

So my girlfriend’s daughter accidently spills water all over my Macbook screen leaving huge bright white splotches in the lower right and left corners of my screen. I freak out and take my MB to an Apple technician and he tells me it will be $750 to replace the screen but that I can probably just evaporate the water myself by running an intensive process that heats up my MB. Obviously, I opt for the latter.

The following Python program did the job.

i = 0
while True:
i = i + 1

It got my CPU A up to a consistent ~80c with the fans obviously kicking on high. I put some pillows behind the screen to increase the heat.

I’ve been running it for about 3 hours now and the splotches are almost cleared up. It will probably take 4-5 hours total to complete the evaporation. But it beats paying $750 for a replacement..

There seems to be no permanent damage to the screen.

UPDATE
Well, it has been about 15 hours total now of drying, some with the program on, most with it off and the splotches are almost all gone. All that is left is a little pea-sized dot for the right splotch. I’ve no reason to think it won’t disappear by the end of the day.

FINAL UPDATE
24 hours later: screen is as good as new. You wouldn’t be able to tell the difference if you tried.

I give plasma every Tuesday and Thursday and when doing so, I can only use my right hand to type because I am pumping with my left since it has better veins. I wanted to use the Dvorak Right-Handed Layout but it doesn’t come with Mac OS X. So I had to create it myself using Ukelele.

You need to place it in ‘/Library/Keyboard Layouts/’ then check it in the International preferences to use it. I typically ‘Show Keyboard Viewer’ from the International menu when using it so I know which keys are which.